


Paradise

by tayminjo



Category: The Maze Runner Series - All Media Types, The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: Afterlife, Angst, Cheese, M/M, cheese and stickmen, minewt, newt isn't good at drawing, post tdc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-05
Updated: 2015-02-05
Packaged: 2018-03-10 15:18:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3295160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tayminjo/pseuds/tayminjo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Minho and Thomas before Paradise, Minho in Paradise, and Minho and Newt in the other paradise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paradise

Thomas lies in bed the way a corpse lies in a coffin. Arms pressed to his sides, eyes on the ceiling, perfectly still. Listening to the horrifically inhumane wailing that fills the Berg now.  
He imagines the way Minho must look as he smashes his knuckles against whatever and screams himself out of his sanity. Bloody hands, swollen eyes, blotchy tearstained cheeks. Like a madman. Like a Crank.  
Like Newt.   
Thomas struggles to contain a fresh wave of skull-shaking grief. Newt.  
Newt, who was still in the Crank Palace, lost among and probably abused by hordes of infant-devouring madmen, all of which he was destined to spend the meagre remainder of his miserable life with.  
Oh, God, Newt.  
There are tears on Thomas's cheeks and more running down his hairline. His fingernails press painfully into his palm, hard enough to cut straight through the skin. I'm so sorry.  
The wailing from outside finally goes hoarse and fades into pathetic, choked sobs. Thomas expects to feel a certain relief (as much relief as one could feel when his best friend has gone mad), but if anything, the sobs are worse.  
Thomas climbs out of bed and trudges zombically into the hallway, where he finds Minho curled in on himself, a tear-soaked heap in the corner. There's blood on his hands and more on the wall.  
And Thomas realizes something.  
He realizes that Minho is a boy.  
Not just a fighter, not a leader, not an invincible pillar of strength, but a broken young boy with a shattered heart and a burning world and an insane lover . . .  
. . . and a friend who is just like him.  
That friend walks over and sits down next to him.   
They cry each other to sleep.

Minho never really stops crying, but he makes a promise to himself that he can find solace in. He knows, for sure, that he can keep it.  
Find the happy ending that Newt could never hope to see, he tells himself every morning, and that's what he sets about doing. It's the only thing he can bring himself to care about.  
He shoots off an innocent man's toe. Hits Thomas in the face twice, once on the jaw and once on the cheekbone. Becomes cold and ruthless and uncaring.   
And finally, finally, after he finds Paradise and gets things moving along there, he goes and digs out the gun that, somehow, makes Thomas get all teary and sissy.  
He presses the barrel against his temple.

A day or two after, Minho finds Newt sitting alone atop a hill in his new paradise, eating cheese and drawing crooked stick figures.  
“Hey, shank. You remember me?”  
Newt looks up confusedly, squinting against the brilliant sunshine.  
Then he smiles. So widely, and so beautifully, that Minho finds himself unable to tell if the light is coming from the sky or the other boy's face.  
“Yeah, I remember you.” He pats the empty space next to him (actually, everywhere around for a mile is empty). “Sit.”  
Minho does, and Newt scoots closer, wrapping his fingers around Minho's wrist and bringing both their hands up to the light. His grip is warm and secure, and it makes Minho want to cry. Even more so than he already does.  
“I missed you,” Newt says. “Didn't think I'd be seeing you for a while longer.”  
Minho doesn't know what to say, so he just twines their fingers together and holds on tight.  
There is quiet between them for a moment as they simply stare at each other, memorising the fresh planes of the other's faces. For once – for the first time, actually – there was no tension, no sadness, no hopelessness. None of the crippling desolation that had afflicted them all during their earthly lifetime. Just peace, and joy, and a gut-twisting excitement that added extra gleam in their eyes.  
Newt leans forward and touches his forehead to Minho's, letting his eyelids droop closed. The skin of Newt's face is sunlit to the extent that they glowed a honey-tinted white; exactly the kind of beautiful that Minho expected to find in a place like this.  
“I missed you,” Newt repeats.  
Minho finds his tongue, gets the words at the back of his throat out and through his mouth.  
“I love you.”  
And then Newt's smiling, half-parted lips meet Minho's, and they kiss with all the love, all the passion, all the joy that has filled them upon finally seeing each other again. It doesn't matter a pile of klunk to them that the last time they'd met, Newt had screamed at Minho to go away, and Minho had agreed. That had happened too long ago. This place, right here and right now, is another lifetime.  
They break apart when they hear footsteps, coming up the hill toward them, growing louder and louder.   
“I love . . . you,” Newt says, loud and strong and unhesitant, putting special emphasis on the you. And he takes Minho's hand again. “Too bloody much.”  
Minho smiles then. And when they see Ben and Alby and Teresa and Chuck and his parents come up the hill to greet them, he smiles wider.

**Author's Note:**

> Sooooo this is my first ao3 fanfic :D


End file.
